Cardon, down below, could hear the clank of the windlass pawls as the slack of the anchor chain was being hove in, the feet of the fellows on deck running to orders, their voices as they hauled on the halyards, and then again the welcome music of the pawls as the anchor was dragged from the mud and hauled, gray and dripping, to the catheads.
Instantly the schooner took the feel of a live ship, to use Cardon's words. She heeled ever so little, and, as he lay in the bunk, he could hear the warble of the water against her planking, to say nothing of the rattle of the rudder chain and the occasional creak of woodwork acknowledging mast pressure and strain.
After a while Cardon, tired with the stuffy air of the cabin, dropped asleep. When he awoke, Floyd was standing beside him, and by the movement of the cabin he knew that the Southern Cross had cleared the harbor and was making her bow to the Pacific.
"How about the pilot?" asked Cardon, rubbing his eyes.
"Dropped him long ago," replied Floyd. "Hop out and come on deck. The fellow is laying the things for breakfast, and a breath of air will do you good."
Cardon slipped from the bunk and came on deck.
A brave breeze was blowing, and the sea, roughed up beneath the morning sun, had a hard, gemlike look. Foam caps showed, and in the west the setting moon hung, ghostlike, in a sky that suggested millions and millions of miles of depth and blueness.
All the east was hard and bright; all the west was blue and subtle and tender; and between the east and the west lay the sea like a country carved from sapphire and tourmaline, with the green hills of earth sinking slowly but surely away beyond the foam in the schooner's wake.
Then, as the sun mounted higher, the sea lost its look of solidity, cast it back on the land, now remote and hard, black fish came walloping along as if racing the rushing schooner. The wind, freshening, blew in great, steady gusts, filling the bellying canvas and pressing like a great hand so that the lee rail was almost awash and the spray came inboard, fresh, like the very breath of the sea.
Cardon, with his hand on the ratlines, stood taking it all in while Floyd stood beside him, his clothes flapping round him in the flogging wind.